Before anyone could question me, I ran to the front gate and hared off down the street, with James and Killer close behind.

When we were a safe distance we stopped to get our breath back. James started to laugh.

"Far out man! That was crazy!"

"Ha!"

"Mum nearly fainted!"

"I bet that guinea pig will never be the same!"

I pulled the container of seeds out of my back pocket, still laughing.

"You little beauties!" I said, holding the container up.

"Hey! Where are they?" said James.

I felt a shiver go down my back as I looked at the container. The lid was loose.

It was empty.

"Oh no!" we said together, looking back down the street.

"They must have dropped out!"

James was always good at working difficult things out, but I didn’t think this latest bit of deductive reasoning was anything to compliment him on. We started running back the way we had come, our eyes desperately searching the ground. I didn't realize till then just how far we'd come, or how difficult it was to find berries on a footpath.

After a fair bit of searching, we didn't find a single one. Somehow, they had all disappeared. We retraced our steps all the way to James' house and searched the lawn, but there was not a single berry in sight... then we saw a very strange sight.

A blackbird was turning into a round ball of feathers. It swelled and swelled until its legs, and head were gone, then it did a loud and very peculiar blow-off. It was a bang and a skirl, like a set of bagpipes exploding, both at the same time, and as it fell from the branches where it had been balancing, it swelled up again and turned into a set of bagpipes and began to play 'Auld Lang Syne' all the way to the ground where it exploded again.